I give you these various addresses in order that you may get the literature of the subject. I will also say a friendly word for the “Labor Age,” an admirable magazine of information edited by Prince Hopkins, and published at 41 Union Square, New York. The issue of April, 1922, was devoted to the subject of labor education, and is full of information as to developments both in this country and Great Britain. In the latter country the Workers’ Education Association has a total of 2,760 branches, to say nothing of the various independent and radical educational bodies.
Also, I ought to mention that outside the labor movement there are some independent experimental schools, which are radical so far as concerns education, and are clearing the way toward the future. In Washington, D. C., in the Progressive Education Association (1719 35th St., N. W.). Ask them for their pamphlet, “The Spirit of Adventure in Education”; ask them for their lists of experimental schools, and especially their account of what is going on at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, which is making an effort to combine real work and study—the basis of all truly democratic education. Write also to the Organic School at Fairhope, Alabama, and inform yourself about the splendid work which Mrs. Marietta Johnson is doing, to train young people in the realities of life, and to make education a complete and living thing. Write to the Bureau of Educational Experiments, 70 Fifth Ave., New York. There are a number of new schools in or near New York; I mention especially the Walden School at 32 West 68th St., the Teachers’ College Playground, and the Gregory School at West Orange, New Jersey. The New School for Social Research, located in New York, is doing excellent work. The Modern School, at Stelton, N. J., is testing out the theories of “libertarian” education. Finally, Dean Alva P. Taylor of the State College of New Mexico has a very interesting plan for organizing a college to be managed by its faculty; he wishes to hear from others who are interested.
Also I must not fail to mention the Pathfinders of America, which is endeavoring to supplement our public school education by character training, the lack of which is our greatest school defect. The founder of this organization, Mr. J. F. Wright, is one of our pioneers, and the work he is doing should be known to all educators. He began with efforts to redeem convicts, and he had sixty-five organizations when I met him a year and a half ago, and was reaching five thousand men in prisons. They have now started “junior councils” in the public schools—much better than the junior chambers of commerce, I assure you! They eliminate religion from their training, but teach the children practical conduct in a practical way, and the parents perceive the results—as do the juvenile delinquency officers in Detroit.
Also, I should mention the work which is being done by Mr. Vance Monroe, editor of the “Colorado Union Farmer” of Denver. Here is a co-operative organization of farmers, which has got up a series of juvenile clubs—again something better than junior chambers of commerce! There are forty-eight such organizations in the state, with youngsters up to the age of sixteen conducting their own courts, forming their own “co-operative credit associations” for the handling of their savings, working up their own debating teams, and in general running their own affairs. There is no control from the grown-ups except the written suggestions of Mr. Monroe, together with the advice of two adults whom the youngsters have themselves chosen to fill that rôle when requested. This is real training for democracy; it is education in the strict sense of the word—drawing out the child’s own impulses and abilities, instead of repressing them and crushing them into a predetermined mould. Through such voluntary and self-governing associations our schools will be made over—and I fear it will have to be done from the outside, not from the inside.[[N]]
[N]. I yield to the temptation to quote a letter from Mr. Monroe, answering some questions as to his work:
“I have made a study of true co-operation for twenty years and that is what I deal in. First I tried to educate men. It didn’t work. Then I tried a combination—men and women. That failed. Then I tried to educate the children. It was a fruitless effort I discovered, as no doubt you did long ago, that the children couldn’t be ‘educated,’ but that if any degree of success was obtained, they must educate themselves.
“The work is carried on through the medium of clubs which are co-related and interlocking. Each club has a code. They are bound in honor to live up to its provisions. They are doing it, too. This may sound like the ‘boy scout plan’ but it is altogether different. Boy scouts are disciplined, army style, by adults. Under our plan the boys and girls discipline themselves. As a matter of fact they help to build their own program. Many noteworthy character building suggestions have come from the kids. Our plan helps to obviate the spirit of warfare without war being mentioned. I feel that war is a dangerous word. Why use it? Our plan is built around harmony, charity, peace and good will. There is no need to discuss war if peace can be thoroly[thoroly] understood.
“The plan sounds complicated to a good many of the adults, but the children understand it. They have more faith, more optimism, more energy, more loyalty, more potentialities, more wisdom. Parents tell me our members are better behaved at home. They are more considerate and unselfish. They think of others. They are getting to the point in many cases where they are ready to make co-operation the very important essential in the texture of life.
“I am working thru the Farmers’ Union. This because it is a vehicle at my hand. I have undertaken thru the medium of the juvenile organization to develop a new rejuvenated spirit of co-operation in the home life, the social life. Each child will thoroly[thoroly] understand the value of co-operation, spiritual and material, its necessity and importance in the scheme of life. They, in their own way and time, come to understand the vitalness of co-operative principles, and learn by experience that failure is ever the creature of competition.